Pitfalls for users

[mekline]

I'm opening this issue to keep track of things that may stymie people as they are just beginning to use Psych-DS in the future. If something stymies you, mention it here! You can also add text to to the [How-To build a repository] page if relevant (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k3ZzAF8vrJeIcMN3q5g_l7WJtoybokvq5ueYVH0dcC8/edit#heading=h.w84ev4cs0qo7) draft.

[mekline]

Excel warnings: if you open a TSV (or CSV!) and then try to save it, Excel complains that you are using a format that will cause you to 'lose things' and strongly attempts to get you to use .xlsx instead. People are likely to click on the button which causes a format conversion. Now your nice simple TSV is a full-on Excel workbook! Instead, you should ignore these warnings, save as a TSV, and open your TSV in a text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, SublimeText) periodically to make sure you still have a plaintext file.

[pederisager]

Related to your comment about TSV in Excel, I am noticing a bunch of problems with .tsv files in projects where collaborators prefer working in Excel. Including:

• Excel complains that formal will cause you to "loose" things
• Excel does not want to open .tsv as a normal file unless you configure Excel in some way, or you figure out how to use the "text to columns" option in Excel.
• Excel does not want to save files as .tsv. Even when you specify tab-separated file, Excel saves it as .txt
• Excel does not let you exit a .tsv document without a "save as" rigmarole, EVEN IF you save the document right before closing.

In my opinion, I greatly underestimated how much harder .tsv is to work with - in a collaborative setting - than what .csv files are.